It was a large animation studio and I was a guy who monitored their render farm. So they were making content and I would write tools (Python, Perl, and Shell scripts) and did have access to their whole codebase.
I told them because there was a box in my contract (I was new to the industry) and the last thing I wanted was to have my friend's short film litigated against.
It's weird because I'm not sure what I'd do different. In that case I probably wouldn't tell them, but I often have side projects that might be profitable. Often I'd see artists working on short-films or publishing their own art books and they would sometimes be internal events promoting those things. I'm not sure if there was just some "understanding" I didn't quite get or if tech and art were treated separately.
I told them because there was a box in my contract (I was new to the industry) and the last thing I wanted was to have my friend's short film litigated against.
It's weird because I'm not sure what I'd do different. In that case I probably wouldn't tell them, but I often have side projects that might be profitable. Often I'd see artists working on short-films or publishing their own art books and they would sometimes be internal events promoting those things. I'm not sure if there was just some "understanding" I didn't quite get or if tech and art were treated separately.